Sometimes, stealin' is not that complex.
Audit: Ex-employee stole $7 million from housing agency in state's largest-ever fraud case
A former Pierce County Housing Authority employee stole nearly $7 million from the agency in the largest-ever fraud ever recorded for a local government in Washington state, an investigation has confirmed. (KOMO News)TACOMA, Wash. – A former Pierce County Housing Authority employee stole nearly $7 million from the agency in the largest-ever fraud ever recorded for a local government in Washington state, an investigation has confirmed.
The investigation by the state Auditor's Office found that the authority’s former finance director, Cova Campbell, used a variety of schemes to misappropriate $6,948,277 in funds since 2016, officials said Monday. The Auditor's Office detected the thefts during a routine financial audit, when auditors questioned wire transfers of large sums of money out of state.
The results of the investigation are being forwarded to the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the FBI, which is conducting a criminal investigation into the case.
A former Pierce County Housing Authority employee stole nearly $7 million from the agency in the largest-ever fraud ever recorded for a local government in Washington state, an investigation has confirmed. (KOMO News)
The Pierce County Housing Authority, which provides affordable housing for low-income families, ended the finance director’s employment in August after the fraud scheme was discovered.
"This was a shameful breach of the public trust that harms the very people who need affordable housing options the most," said State Auditor Pat McCarthy.
The auditor's investigation also discovered how the thefts were carried out, and the Housing Authority has now implemented new, stricter controls to prevent it from happening again, said Housing Authority Chair Sally Porter Smith.
According to investigators, the former finance director first began making fraudulent purchases on the housing authority’s credit cards in March 2016.
In July 2016, she made the first of 78 transactions that disguised transfers to her own account as batched payments to legitimate vendors. In this scheme, she substituted her own bank account number for the vendors’ account numbers, according to the Auditor's Office.
In 2018, she transferred housing authority funds to a bank in Oklahoma, where she had purchased property the same month. In 2019, she began directly wiring housing authority funds into her personal Washington bank account, the investigation found.
The former finance director admitted to investigators that she was responsible for the misappropriations - but claimed she had been directed by the housing authority’s executive director to misappropriate the funds and to provide him with a share in cash. The investigators found no evidence to support that assertion.
State Auditor Pat McCarthy announces the result of the investigation into the $7 million fraud scheme{p}{/p}
The investigation also revealed concerted efforts by the former finance director to circumvent accountability and detection.
Details, including a breakdown of the amount obtained through each scheme, can be found in the full fraud investigation report, which can be found here.
Pierce County Housing Authority Audit by Beverly Tran on Scribd
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